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Samsung Speeds Up Storage Used in Mobile Devices

Samsung said that it has started manufacturing its fastest-ever embedded universal flash storage for smartphone and other mobile devices where it will support the shift to larger and higher resolution displays. Based on the third generation of the eUFS standard, the chip delivers double the speed of the company's current line of flash storage, which is based on the UFS 2.1 standard.

The 512-gigabyte product is significantly faster than the chips currently used in smartphones. The chip supports read speeds of 2.1 gigabits per second, or four times speedier than SATA storage devices and around 20 times faster than most microSD cards. The write speeds have been improved by 50 percent to 410 megabits-per-second, or roughly the same as SATA devices, Samsung said.

Using eUFS 3.0 technology, Samsung was also able to increase the chip's random read and write speeds by 36 percent, giving smartphones the ability to handle more applications at the same time without sacrificing responsiveness for users. The chip's storage speeds match what can be founded in ultrathin laptops, according to Cheol Choi, Samsung's vice president of memory sales and marketing.

Samsung has also started selling a 128GB model of the chip, which is based on its V-NAND technology. The company also plans to release 256GB and 1GB models before the end of the year. Samsung is the largest player in not only memory chip market—where it competes with Micron and Toshiba, among others—but also the smartphone space, which is struggling through a prolonged slowdown.

Last month, the company started manufacturing its first mobile memory chip capable of storing 1TB. The chip doubles the storage of the company’s current highest capacity chips without increasing its footprint. Samsung said that the chip will give smartphones storage levels comparable to lower end personal computers, enabling them to store more photographs, videos and applications than ever.